lution problems for low-altitude rescue operations. They propose a multi-agent-based method with each aircraft as an agent to solve the problem. The conflicts.
Editorial
Modeling, scheduling, and control in advanced production systems Since the industrial revolution, there have been dramatic productivity increases in production systems, driven by technological advances. In the 19th century, the invention of the steam engine provided factories with power; in the early part of the 20th century, electrification resulted in mass production, and industry automation was realized in the 1970s. However, during the several decades that followed, the technological advancements in industrial production systems were incremental, especially compared with the breakthrough in information technology. Faced with great challenges resulting from customization, shorter product life cycles, a lack of resources and energy, and environment pollution, there is now a fourth wave of technological advancement driven by advanced information technology. This has led to the rise of Industry 4.0, a new digital industrial technology. In the era of Industry 4.0, the physical subsystems in a production system, such as machines, materials, robots, and material handling systems, and other devices, are integrated via information technology, forming a so-called cyber physics production system. In this way, a production system becomes intelligent. To implement Industry 4.0, one of the critical issues is to operate a production system in an intelligent way such that undesired events never occur,1,2 feasibility is guaranteed,3,4 productivity is maximized,5–7 and energy efficiency is optimized.8 Thus, it is significant to develop efficient and effective techniques for the operations of production systems. Focusing on modeling, supervisory control, performance evaluation, scheduling, supply chain management, simulation, process optimization, and resource perception, this Special Collection contains 17 original contributions reporting the latest advances in intelligent production systems. They present the results of recent research, new findings, and novel methods on the stateof-the-art for blocking-free and safe operations, productivity increase, material flow optimization, energy consumption reduction, and process control for production systems. Many production systems can be categorized as discrete event systems (DESs). In a DES, deadlocks, conflicts, and blockage may occur, leading to the stoppage of operations of a production process, with disastrous
Advances in Mechanical Engineering 2018, Vol. 10(6) 1–3 Ó The Author(s) 2018 DOI: 10.1177/1687814018779621 journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
consequences. Thus, supervisory control is necessary to prevent such events. In this Special Collection, six articles deal with this issue. The first article, authored by Hou and Barkaoui,9 presents a comprehensive review on deadlock prevention for production systems modeled by Petri nets. It presents the refined concepts of elementary siphons, their extended versions, the concepts of controllability of dependent and independent siphons, and how deadlock can be controlled by using dependent and independent siphons. It also presents methods to find siphons. The second article, authored by Jiang et al.,10 studies the important problem of detection and restoration of power transmission failures. The problem is modeled using Petri nets. Based on the model, a supervisory strategy implemented by distributed supervisors is proposed to detect a fault when it occurs and restore the transmission by selecting a suitable scheme. The proposed strategy can also improve the utilization rate of the available loads. The third article, authored by Zhao,11 aims to design a supervisor for a production system where an operation may have multiple resource acquisition requirements such that the system is blocking-free. A two-stage method is proposed to synthesize a blocking-free supervisor and it is shown that such a supervisor with simple controller structure can be efficiently designed. To obtain an optimal supervisor for a system modeled using Petri nets, one often needs to enumerate all reachable markings via reachability analysis, which imposes prohibitive computation on designing a supervisor. The fourth article, authored by Hong et al.,12 aims to tackle this challenging problem. Instead of using reachability analysis, they find all reachable markings by using combinatorics such that the computational complexity can be significantly reduced compared with reachability analysis. When emergency events such as earthquakes occur, multiple aircrafts may be used for rescue. In this scenario, conflicts exist. The fifth article, authored by Zhang et al.,13 conducts a study on flight conflict resolution problems for low-altitude rescue operations. They propose a multi-agent-based method with each aircraft as an agent to solve the problem. The conflicts are resolved by the collaboration of the agents by different rescue priorities. The sixth article, authored by
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2 Fang and Duan,14 reports a method for an intelligent vehicle to change from one lane to another such that the lane change time is minimized and collisions are avoided. An extended adaptive pseudo-spectral method is proposed to solve the problem. The proposed method can deal with non-linearity and is robust to adapt to parameter uncertainty. Effective and efficient scheduling techniques are vitally important for productivity gains, operational feasibility, and the energy efficiency of a production system. In this Special Collection, there are five articles that deal with this issue. The seventh article, authored by Sakai and Nishi,15 investigates the scheduling problem of dual-armed cluster tools in semiconductor manufacturing. The problem is modeled by a Petri net to obtain a deadlock prevention policy. Then, based on the model and control policy, a heuristic method is proposed to schedule the system such that both the wafer residency time and makespan are minimized to ensure feasibility and increase productivity. The eighth article, authored by Kucharska et al.,16 studies the scheduling problem of flow-shop, where unexpected defects may be detected during the production processes and the job processing time is not predetermined. To adapt to such uncertainties, an algebraic-logical metal-modelbased approach is proposed and a hybrid algorithm is developed to construct a solution. The ninth article, authored by Yu et al.,17 reports a study on the scheduling problem of two identical parallel machines to minimize both the total tardiness time and makespan. A multi-agent scheduling method is proposed for the problem. Based on the multi-agent architecture, a single distribution strategy and a centralized distribution strategy are presented to assign jobs to machines for different scheduling environments. The 10th article, authored by Luo et al.,18 presents a method of scheduling a multi-type configuration centrifugal pump system with single invert for energy efficiency. It presents a synchronous switch control method to schedule the system such that it can achieve the performance of one with two inverts. The 11th article, authored by Yin et al.,19 reports a method for job shop scheduling for energy efficiency, productivity increase, and noise reduction by controlling the machine spindle speed. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem and a genetic algorithm is developed to solve the problem. To ensure that production systems are operated effectively, the value chains among the different enterprises need to be connected via an effective supply chain. Two articles in this Special Collection conduct studies on this subject. The 12th article, authored by Kia et al.,20 studies the scheduling problem of a four-stage supply chain to minimize inventory, transportation, and production setup costs. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear programming and a hybrid
Advances in Mechanical Engineering algorithm including a modified imperialist competitive algorithm, and a teaching learning-based optimization is developed to solve the problem. The 13th article, authored by Han et al.,21 develops a collaborative material management system for an offshore platform. It is developed based on the industrial Internet of Things and multi-agent technology, by designing an algorithm for negotiation among agents. In this system, materials can be precisely recorded, tracked, and traced. To implement Industry 4.0, the physical part of a production system should be made smart, quality should be assured, and equipment should be in a good state. In this Special Collection, four articles conduct studies on this issue. The 14th article, authored by Jiang et al.,22 presents a method for resource perception and process control. By this method, in a production system, a radio-frequency-identification (RFID) reader or tag is attached to a resource in the system such that the resource becomes smart. Based on the readings from the resource, a decentralized process control approach is presented using a Petri net model. The 15th article, authored by Zhang et al.,23 conducts a study on quality prediction for complex production processes with non-linear and wide operating conditions. They present a multi-model approach by combining fuzzy C-means clustering with support vector regression. The 16th article, authored by Luo et al.,24 reports a method for optimizing the preload of bearings for machine tool spindle. They present the relationship between the optimal preload and the parameters that affect the preload. The 17th article, authored by Xiao et al.,25 reports an experimental and simulation study on the concrete plastic-damage factor. It shows that the results obtained by the energy equivalent principle method are better than those obtained by the strain equivalent principle method. NaiQi Wu1,2, Tatsushi Nishi3 and Murat Uzam4 Institute of Systems Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, China 2 National Key Laboratory of Precise Electronic Manufacturing Technology and Equipment, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China 3 Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Japan 4 Talas/Kayseri, Turkey Acknowledgements 1
This Special Collection would not be possible without the contributions of various talented authors, hardworking and professional reviewers, and the dedicated editorial team of Advances in Mechanical Engineering. Congratulations to all authors. No matter what the final decisions of the submitted manuscripts were, the feedback, comments, and suggestions from the reviewers and editors helped the authors to improve their papers. We would like to take this opportunity to
Editorial present our sincere gratitude to all reviewers. Finally, we present our gratitude to the editorial team of Advances in Mechanical Engineering.
Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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